"Fucked Up" - Brad Binder On Unnecessary Long Lap Penalty
Categories: MotoGP
A messed-up start made life difficult for Brad Binder at Le Mans. However, he is most annoyed about his Long Lap Penalty.
For Brad Binder, Sunday’s race at Le Mans could not have started worse. After the South African actually got off the line more than decent, Alex Marquez pushed him wide after a somewhat overambitious maneuver in Turn 6.
The consequence? 16th place after the first lap. However, with the Top 3 still in sight and 26 laps to go, Binder started a race to catch up.
“I’d already rocketed from tenth place to the front by turn 4, but on the approach to turn 6, someone bumped into me. I had to take a huge detour, dropping back to 18th or 20th place.”
The South African can overlook the slight bump in the starting phase as “unfortunately certain things can go wrong in the start phase”.
“It was just a bit unfortunate for me that I was thrown back from fifth or sixth place to 20th because of it. This incident made my race a lot more difficult, it then became a lot trickier. But I’m happy with how I handled those situations.”
"I Was A Tenth Of A Second Off, I Fucked Up"
Rather, the now championship third is annoyed about his own mistake when trying to overtake teammate Jack Miller.
“I botched the attack on Jack in the chicane. Unfortunately, I missed my braking point a bit when trying to overtake, so I cut the chicane.”
To avoid a penalty, Binder dropped back, but not far enough. According to the rule book, a rider taking a shortcut must lose at least one second on his average sector time, and Binder was 0.1 sec short.
“I thought I had voluntarily given up the correct time again, but I was off by a tenth of a second. I fucked it up. It’s normal that they then give you a penalty.”
However, even the fact that he was denied the chance of an even better position doesn’t make the South African feel bad looking back at the circumstances of his race.
“In summary, I have to say that if we take into account the three things that went wrong in this race, then 6th place is a perfect result!”
“The fact that I botched the attack on Jack in the chicane is annoying. But ‘that’s life’. Now we’ll take a three-week break and continue at Mugello.”
